James Shore

APRIL 27, 2024

I’ve been quiet lately, and that’s because I’ve joined OpenSesame as Vice President of Engineering. It’s been a fascinating opportunity to rebuild an engineering organization from the inside, and I’m loving every minute. Enough that I don’t do any coding myself, and the managers that report to me don’t have time to do much either.)

Software Engineering 75

Software Engineering Engineering Technical Advisors Software 75

Honeycomb

AUGUST 3, 2023

Rework Rework or refactoring is probably the category most associated with “tech debt” in software engineering. Debt is still a useful concept While tech debt is rarely a helpful label when making the argument to pay down debt, the notion of “debt” remains a useful one in software engineering.

Part-Time VPE 98

Part-Time VPE Engineering Software Engineering Tools 98

Honeycomb

MAY 15, 2024

Software is in a crisis. It’s through a combination of technical artifacts, organizational practices and policies, and pure gumption that they manage to maintain themselves through time. Software is both a product of and part of a sociotechnical system. This is nothing new. They don’t take that achievement for granted.

Technical Advisors 93

Technical Advisors Groups Organization Software 93

Honeycomb

JULY 12, 2023

I was curious about moving up the engineering management ladder eventually, but I assumed a VP opportunity would be out of reach for a long time, if ever. I find basically all business problems and domains within a software company interesting, and I have always loved that startups let you see how all the pieces fit together.

Part-Time VPE 98

Part-Time VPE Engineering B2C Technical Review 98

LaunchDarkly

JUNE 12, 2020

Prior to taking on the tactical project manager role, I was in a senior engineering manager role. The technical project manager role was actually pretty new. But as the engineering manager there, I grew a team from zero. A team of me to a team of about somewhere between 20 and 25 software engineers.

Weak Development Team 52

Weak Development Team Part-Time VPE Development Engineering 52

TechCrunch

JULY 13, 2021

Expensify is an SF-founded (now Portland-based), decentralized startup focused on building expense reporting and analytics software for companies and CFOs. That’s peculiar, because the duo honestly couldn’t be more different. New York-based NS1 designs highly redundant DNS and internet traffic performance tools for web applications.

Innovation 249

Innovation Internet Engineering Engineering Culture 249

Honeycomb

JULY 14, 2023

I assumed being a VP would require the same amount of slack as my past engineering manager and director roles, but in practice I’ve found that it really helps to leave even more slack time. I not only need to show up to conversations with emotional energy; I need to be able to do strategic thinking and provide directional clarity.

Part-Time VPE 98

Part-Time VPE Engineering Weak Development Team Energy 98